UFW

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State of the Union

United Farm Workers turn up heat on North Bay companies

By R. V. Scheide

As members of the United Farm Workers union prepare for a week of celebrations centered on Cesar Chavez Day, this Wednesday, March 31, the union continues to make strides both locally and nationally in the ongoing battle to better the wages and working conditions of agricultural workers.

Chavez, who passed away in 1993, would have turned 77 on March 31. He is internationally renowned for founding the first successful farm labor organization in 1962. Robert Kennedy called Chavez “one of the heroic figures of our times.”

Locally, the UFW is negotiating contracts with two major Sonoma County employers, Gallo of Sonoma and the Redwood Empire lumber company. The negotiations have stalled repeatedly, the UFW says, thanks to the continued union-busting tactics used by both employers. Meanwhile, on the national front, UFW president Arturo Rodriguez has called on members of the House and the Senate to pass the AgJobs bill, which will grant permanent citizenship to undocumented workers who stay in the country and continue to work in agriculture.

“Can we say to the world this is the land of freedom except for undocumented immigrants?” Rodriguez said at a Washington, D.C., press conference March 24. “To those who say we shouldn’t consider or cooperate with hard-working, tax-paying undocumented immigrants, that they are criminals and trespassers, I say to you: Why do you continue to buy most fresh fruits and vegetables? They come to your tables through the skill and toil of undocumented farm workers.”

The UFW’s struggle to unionize Gallo of Sonoma has been simmering for more than a decade, after wine-grape workers voted for UFW representation in 1994. Since then, Gallo has frustrated the UFW’s efforts by refusing to extend benefits to farm-labor contractors. Since 1994, the company’s use of such workers has increased from 60 percent to 80 percent of the workforce.

Last November, more than 400 wine country workers and supporters joined a UFW march in Santa Rosa to demand that Gallo make good on its promise to provide health benefits to contracted farm laborers. In December, a state judge ruled that Gallo violated state law when it tried to decertify the union last year. In January the UFW filed new charges against the company, alleging that a whistleblower had been fired because of his union activities.

Gallo of Sonoma spokesman John Segale countered that both the current contract and the contract on the table offer health benefits to contract laborers hired as full-time employees by the company.

Increasingly, undocumented immigrants have been entering the workforce in fields that were once dominated by native-born or naturalized laborers, such as the construction industry. Because these workers are paid less and often receive no benefits, employers can cut costs substantially by hiring them.

Two years ago, employees at the Redwood Empire’s sawmills in Asti decided they’d had enough. After the company denied them the accustomed 3 percent annual cost-of-living adjustment and cut some of their benefits, they organized a work stoppage and went looking for union representation.

“The UFW is spreading into other industries,” says Vanessa Rhodes, Santa Rosa-based UFW contract administrator. “When those Asti workers organized the work stoppage, they walked out and came to the UFW. Normally, these situations come about because employees are in dire need. They themselves decide they want a union.”

Eventually, Redwood Empire granted the cost-of-living raise and reinstated benefits, hoping, the UFW says, to persuade employees that a union was unnecessary. But in February 2003, employees voted to have wage increases and benefits secured through a contract negotiated by the UFW.

Since then, according to Rhodes, Redwood Empire has dug its feet in on contract negotiations, hoping to force a new election in 2005. Rhodes says that some workers who have supported the union have been targeted by Redwood Empire management, violating the National Labor Relations Board’s requirements for good-faith bargaining.

One such employee, Irma Sanchez of Cloverdale, was fired for allegedly going to the bathroom too often. Co-workers allege that her firing was pure retaliation. Other employees are afraid to testify about conditions at Redwood Empire facilities, which reportedly include poor sanitation in the bathrooms and the kitchen, because they fear for their jobs.

Neither Redwood Empire nor its parent company, San Jose-based Pacific States Industries, would comment for this story.

Rhodes says that negotiating the contract with Gallo is crucial and will be one of the major themes in this year’s Cesar Chavez Day march and rally for legalization. “If we can win this with Gallo, all the other contracts will follow suit,” she says enthusiastically before switching to a more somber tone. “And if we lose . . . all the contracts will follow suit.”

The Cesar Chavez Day march is scheduled for Sunday, April 4, at 10am, beginning at 665 Sebastopol Road (the old Albertson’s parking lot) and ending with a rally at Court House Square at the corner of Fourth Street and Mendocino Avenue, Santa Rosa.

From the March 31-April 6, 2004 issue of the North Bay Bohemian.

© Metro Publishing Inc.

Cinema Epicuria

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Cinema Epicuria

Wise Beyond Her Years: Jena Malone costars in ‘Saved!’

Beautiful Truths

Cinema Epicuria gets personal

For most fans of the cinematic arts, the recipe for a memorable film festival is simple: we want a laid-back environment, a focus on excellent films we might not get to see anywhere else, and maybe a certified filmmaking celebrity or two. Not too many, though–just enough to get our pulses thrumming.

Cinema Epicuria, the familiar name for the Sonoma Valley Film Festival, now in its seventh year, has been steadily developing a reputation as one of the county’s most laid-back, film-focused events, with just enough celebrity action to make people take notice. And people are taking notice.

With its added emphasis on food and wine–free winetastings and culinary treats are offered at all screenings–Cinema Epicuria has grown larger each year, this time adding a new venue devoted specifically to documentary films, a new animation program, and a full-fledged awards ceremony, while also continuing its popular subfestival of extremely edgy films, affectionately known as the Lounge.

A new director of programming steps up this year as well: Hollywood insider Tiffany Naiman. Asked to describe the tone of this year’s festival, Naiman is precise. “We’ve programmed a lot of really personal films this year,” she says, “films that look at the way we all live together.”

The programming at most film festivals often ends up revealing an accidental theme or two, with several films falling together into some unofficial category. At last year’s SVFF event, for example, there was a surprising number of films about people engaged in long conversations. Asked if there are any such themes among this year’s films, Naiman admits there are a few films about rock ‘n’ roll (see sidebar) and many featuring strong lead performances by women.

This year’s Imagery Honors–in which three actors or filmmakers are honored for their work–is an all-female event, a cross-generational homage to the work of Jena Malone (Bastard Out of Carolina, Contact, Stepmom, Donnie Darko, Life as a House), Deborah Kara Unger (Crash, The Hurricane, The Game, Sunshine) and Irish legend Fionnula Flanagan (James Joyce’s Women; Rich Man, Poor Man; Some Mother’s Son; Waking Ned Devine; The Others). There will be an additional tribute to the career of actress Blythe Danner, appearing in the emotionally gripping two-person drama Quality of Light, also starring Robert Forster, a tribute recipient in 2002. All four women will be in attendance at the festival and available for audience questions following the screenings of their films.

Jena Malone has major roles in the forthcoming United States of Leland and the festival’s closing-night film, Brian Dannelly’s Saved! Also starring Mandy Moore, Heather Matarazzo, Macaulay Culkin and Mary-Louise Parker, Saved! (already the subject of lots of college radio buzz) is a bit like Fast Times at Ridgemont High, only set at a Christian high school.

“It’s a fun movie, but it’s also very personal and very important,” says Malone, 19, speaking by phone from her home in Lake Tahoe. “Belief is a beautiful thing and it’s a powerful thing, but because it’s so powerful it can also be dangerous. We’re seeing that in the world today. In Saved! we’re breaking down a lot of the stereotypes in one specific group, the group of young people involved in this New Age kind of Christianity.”

In the film, Malone plays a born-again at the top of the heap at American Eagle Christian High School, with Mandy Moore as her best friend, another popular senior whose life has been held together by nothing but her beliefs. “It propels her to do things that are not necessarily good,” says Malone. “My character has experiences that cause her to question her faith. That’s what the film is saying: question your beliefs. Test them, because without understanding how your philosophical foundation is structured, how can you grow as a person and build on that foundation? In the process of testing those beliefs, whether you come back to them or not, you will have strengthened the belief you end up with.”

Malone underscores the importance of film festivals, where smaller films are acknowledged and celebrated. “Unfortunately, most American cinema doesn’t want to feed and nurture us with lots of different ideas about the world and about life,” she says. “A lot of American cinema is built on manipulation and formula. That’s not true of everything, but it seems so rare when you see something really stunning, like many of the independent films and even some of the more unusual studio films. But it’s sad that those films aren’t more widely known and talked about. No one’s walking around wearing The Weight of Water T-shirts, and that’s one of the best and truest films I’ve ever seen.”

Truth, explains Malone, is what independent cinema is all about. “For me, it does comes down to truth,” she laughs. “Complicated truths or beautiful truths that make you laugh, simple truths or messy truths that help us to express what we’re seeing and feeling and experiencing. I want movies to be about what’s true, what’s real, what’s important.”

That applies to the kinds of movies she hopes to make with the rest of her burgeoning career. “It’s good to do work that you want to do, that satisfies you and makes you proud,” Malone says. “When it’s your status or your career that is dictating what you do, when you are no longer making choices with your heart, it kind of sucks.”

Where Jena Malone is just starting out, Fionnula Flanagan has, in her words, “been around forever.” The kind of actress who people recognize when they see her, even if they can’t place the face or remember the name, Flanagan has been making first-rate films since 1974’s Picture of Dorian Gray. Many American audiences first saw her in the epic TV miniseries Rich Man, Poor Man, and she won major acclaim when her one-woman show James Joyce’s Women was made into a critically praised film in 1985.

In recent years, she’s landed a string of gem parts in popular films, from Mrs. Mills, the ghostly housekeeper in The Others, to Teensy, the recovering alcoholic Southern belle in The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood. Some will remember her as the scientist who claimed to be Data’s “mother” on Star Trek: The Next Generation. While there will certainly be clips of those roles and others at the tribute, the only film she’s got running in the festival is One of the Oldest Con Games, a delightful 20-minute short featured in the Narrative Short Films program. In the film, directed by Karen King, Flanagan plays a grieving widow who isn’t the easy target two con men assume she is.

Speaking from her Los Angeles office, Flanagan describes her viewpoint when asked to sum up her own acting career. “I know people always say they’ve been fortunate about being able to do this and that, and I think, yes, I certainly do feel fortunate,” she says. “There are certain things I’ve gotten to play that I really loved playing, because they meant so much to me in the larger world, issues that were very personal.”

Along with James Joyce’s Women (“Making that film was a journey that was very personal for me,” she says), Flanagan cites Jim Sheridan’s Some Mother’s Son, about the 1981 prison hunger strike in Northern Ireland, as a meaningful experience. “It was something that was very close to my heart,” she says. “I feel extremely grateful to have been a part of that film, to have played one of those mothers and to have been able to carry that story.

“If a film has a resonance in the larger world outside the film, then it’s of interest to me,” she continues. “If it doesn’t have that, then, well, it’s just a job. But I’ve been fortunate that those kinds of gifts have been given to me along the way–movies I’ve done that have to do with remarkable moments in the history of our time.”

Cinema Epicuria runs Wednesday, March 31, through Sunday, April 4. For a complete listing of the over 100 films and events, check the website at www.cinemaepicuria.org or call 707.933.2600.

Almost Famous

Mayor of the Sunset Strip, the opening-night film of the Sonoma Valley Film Festival, is one of many films this year to examine the world of rock ‘n’ roll, its makers and its fans. Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky’s Metallica Mayhem is an in-depth look at the musicians behind one of heavy metal’s most successful bands. The Devil Cats is a mockumentary about an all-girl band who’ve made themselves famous but can’t actually play music. And while Mayor of the Sunset Strip, by veteran filmmaker George Hickenlooper, may seem like a bit of a mockumentary itself, the film and the man it’s about, Los Angeles DJ Rodney Bingenheimer, are 100 percent the real thing.

Bingenheimer, born and raised in Mountain View, is something of a Forrest Gump in the L.A. rock scene, an unassuming guy who’s managed to become friends with nearly every major rock star of the last four decades, many of whom, like David Bowie, appear on film to sing his praises. The movie is set for a national release following its screening at the festival. After years of hanging out with the famous, and in some ways helping them to become famous, Bingenheimer might be on the verge of joining the ranks of rock ‘n’ roll celebrity himself. He was even asked to contribute his voice to a character (DJ Fish) on Nickelodeon’s SpongeBob SquarePants.

“Celebrity, um, it’s been a big part of my life, I guess,” Bingenheimer allows by phone, “because I’ve been involved in radio, doing my show in L.A. on Sunday nights, being a rock writer for various publications, and doing the English Disco [the club he once owned on Sunset Strip], where famous people were always around.”

While there are those who would decry the shallowness of the celebrity-worshipping culture he’s a part of, Bingenheimer has a sweetly simple take on the subject. “It makes you feel happy to meet a celebrity,” he says. “It feels good to say, ‘Wow, that actor or actress, that musician, is so cool. He spoke to me.’ It’s a simple thing, but it’s nice when it happens.”

–D.T.

From the March 31-April 6, 2004 issue of the North Bay Bohemian.

© Metro Publishing Inc.

Swirl ‘n’ Spit

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Swirl ‘n’ Spit

Swirl ‘n’ Spit
Tasting Room of the Week

Ravenswood Winery

By Heather Irwin

Lowdown: You’ve got to be making some damn good wine to inspire folks–normally sane, rational folks–to get your winery’s logo tattooed on their bodies.

But this is no normal, sane wine; it is the mighty red Zinfandel. And unlike the cute, pink stuff you serve with fried chicken on a hot summer day, this wine has cajones. Ravenswood’s motto, after all, is “No wimpy wines.”

Vibe: Give yourself over to the Zinfantastic voyage and feel the love. Ravenswood Zinfandels are exemplary for their varietal, and the winery is among the earliest to bring red Zinfandels–historically used for immigrants’ homemade jug wines–to a higher palate. The tasting staff is insanely knowledgeable about their wines and want to help newcomers appreciate and learn the flavors and unique characteristics. We even got a quick lesson on proper swirling etiquette and a fascinating discourse on the different acidities of different Zins. After all that, who wouldn’t want a tattoo?

Mouth value: Definitely do the Zin thing here. Tastings are $5 (applied toward a purchase), but the pours are generous and you can taste up to six different types of wine–a great opportunity to really get to know the breadth of Zin. There are big flavor differences that go from peppery Lodi Zins to earthier, heartier Belloni Zins from the Russian River Valley. We particularly liked the 2000 Carignane from Sonoma County ($15) that had a tart cherry and cranberry flavor.

Don’t miss: The winery is located just outside of Sonoma. With the taste of a dark, fruity Zin still heavy on our tongues, we headed straight to Sonoma Saveurs (487 First St., Sonoma, 707.996.7007) for a foie gras terrine ($14) on the fly. After tasting their pâté at the recent Rhone Rangers event in San Francisco, we were hooked. All the small charcuterie items are available for lunchtime take-away.

Five-second snob: Unlike most other grape varietals grown in California, Zinfandel is arguably the most American grape around. It has no real European equivalent, making it, well, our grape. It’s apple pie and Harleys to their tarte tatin and Yugos. It’s lusty and unpretentious, spicy and forward, just a little rough around the edges but charmingly endearing. Throw a cowboy hat on it, and its ready to rope those Syrahs into submission.

Spot: Ravenswood Winery, 18701 Gehricke Road, Sonoma. Open daily, 10am to 5pm. 707.933.2332.

From the March 31-April 6, 2004 issue of the North Bay Bohemian.

© Metro Publishing Inc.

Ronald K. Brown

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Ronald K. Brown

Come Ye: Ronald K. Brown, foreground, is changing American dance.

Prayer Warrior

Choreographer Ronald K. Brown comes into the light

By Gretchen Giles

Other people are making pretty dances,” says choreographer Ronald K. Brown during an early morning phone call from a Washington, D.C., hotel room. “Besides,” he laughs, “I think that mine are pretty.”

Pretty? Maybe.

Beautiful, dense, emotional, spiritual, poetic, layered in metaphor and the language of desire? Absolutely.

Brown, 38, is quickly becoming the premier modern-dance choreographer of his, or any, generation. Bringing his Evidence dance troupe to the Napa Valley Opera House April 2-3, Brown and company perform work that springs from history, poetry, popular culture and the intensely private longings of universal humanity.

“When I started the company at age 19,” Brown says, “my feeling was that when I went to the theater, I didn’t recognize myself. When I was growing up, I wanted to be a ballet dancer, but then I discovered modern dance. People had their shoes off, it was more real. But then I realized that the dancers were still looking up at the balcony, avoiding the gaze of the audience. They were doing dances about ice.

“So from the very beginning, the idea was to create stories; I wanted to be seen as people first, so that when you’re talking about the human condition, you’re talking from that spot. Our ability to find God in ourselves and work in the world with that being clear in our intentions is very important to me. I understand that it’s not important to everyone and some people would prefer that I simply do duets of a man and a woman dancing together.”

Instead, Brown creates dances about the changes in the lives of those liberated from slavery after the Civil War and those fleeing West African villages for 20th-century cities a century later (“High Life”). Instead, he composes a lament to the late choreographer Stephanie Reinhardt, co-founder of the American Dance Festival (“For You”). And instead of duets, he has created a piece based on the solitude of the monk’s cell and the yearning toward others that constantly gnaws at us when we are alone but not true with our souls (“Walking Out the Dark”).

New on the program for the NVOH is Brown’s latest work, “Come Ye,” based on the Nina Simone song of the same name. A call to peace, hope and the fight to stay alive, “Come Ye” struck Brown just as the United States was first invading Afghanistan.

“I was listening to [Nina Simone’s] music, and it summed up how I felt because, like a lot of Americans, I was just in a state considering the idea of being at war,” Brown says. “It is this incredible calling for prayer for those who are living in fear. OK, that was the jewel I needed to start to dream about this piece about a summoning of prayer warriors who are dedicated to peace but understand having to fight for your life. In a time of war, the destination is still peace. It became about coming into alignment with other revolutionaries from history, like Nina Simone, and her creative protest; she was about the equity of humanity across the board.

“When Nina Simone passed away,” he continues, “I was thinking, ‘Oh my goodness, should I do this piece?’ Because I didn’t want it to be a gimmick; that was never the purpose. But then it was, ‘Of course,’ because the piece is about the legacy. Because of [Simone] ascending, we have to do this piece.”

Later Brown chuckles, “We choreo-graphers–it’s as though we’re always only working on one piece our whole careers. My point is that when there’s damage in our relationships, then God puts us on some sort of punishment that makes us figure out what it is that’s making us not be available. Once you realize what it is about your own behavior that you can change–because that’s the only thing you can change–then you can come into the light.”

Ronald K. Brown and Evidence perform Friday-Saturday, April 2-3, at the Napa Valley Opera House, 1030 Main St., Napa. 8pm. $15-$35. 707.226.7372.

From the March 31-April 6, 2004 issue of the North Bay Bohemian.

© Metro Publishing Inc.

Same-Sex Marriage

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Same-Sex Marriage

Photograph by Rory McNamara

Spouses For Life: Donna Piepgras and Lucie James are among the 4,100 couples who wed in San Francisco.

Lovers in a Dangerous Time

Same-sex marriage, religion and the great escape from loneliness

By R. V. Scheide

Being lonely sucks. Maybe Greta Garbo vanted to be alone, but for the rest of us, we pair off, hanging on to our partners ’til death us do part, or, short of that, for as long as we can stand them. Civilization itself sprouted from the seeds of loneliness, and today it is the rare person who stands alone, who sticks up for his or her own beliefs, no matter how odd or repugnant these beliefs may seem to others. That’s why Roy Lamoreaux was just about the loneliest man in the room at the Sebastopol City Council meeting Tuesday night, March 16.

The council was scheduled to vote on a resolution proposing that the Sonoma County clerk begin issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples. Citizens from Guerneville to Petaluma, including a large number of lesbian and gay couples, packed the room in support of the resolution, which passed unanimously.

Like many of the resolutions proposed by the Green Party-dominated Sebastopol City Council, its effect will mostly be symbolic. It would by no means make same-sex marriage legal in Sonoma County. Nevertheless, Roy was on hand to vehemently oppose the resolution.

It was the last place Roy, a 45-year-old devout Mormon, ever imagined he’d find himself. But a month earlier, newly elected San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom had shocked mainstream America by permitting same-sex marriages in San Francisco County. From Feb. 10 until March 11, when the California Supreme Court intervened, 4,100 gay and lesbian couples, including many from the North Bay, flocked to San Francisco to tie the knot. And a line of newlyweds, ministers and other same-sex marriage supporters were queued that night for the opportunity to speak during the public comments portion of the council meeting.

Roy, oblivious to the growing line, sat outside by himself in a folding chair in the community center’s overflow section, nervously concentrating on what he planned to say at the lectern. Lanky, mild-mannered, with a neatly manicured mustache, the Rohnert Park resident might easily be mistaken for a same-sex marriage supporter.

But Roy’s a religious man. Raised as a Pentecostal, he converted to the Latter Day Saints when he was 21. Those theologies taught him that same-sex marriage is not just a moral wrong, but a moral evil–fire-and-brimstone evil. As one woman finished talking, Roy took advantage of the pause between speakers and suddenly lurched up to the lectern.

“This is the minority’s opinion,” he said, sputtering before catching his rhythm. “The gay-rights issue only affects about 2 to 3 percent of the population,” he continued, correctly noting that according to most polls, a majority of Americans and even most Californians don’t favor same-sex marriage. “I would like them to look back in history, to Rome and Sodom and Gomorrah, and see what happened to them. My God, if families are not protected, this nation will be destroyed!”

Someone then pointed out that he’d spoken out of turn, and blushing politely, Roy scurried back to his seat. He was still the loneliest person in the room, but he was confident that God was on his side. After all, the institution of marriage was under attack, and all it would take for evil to prevail was for good to do nothing.

The sun cut through the morning mist shrouding the forests around Guerneville by 10am the next Sunday morning, just in time for services at Metropolitan Community Church of the Redwood Empire in Oddfellows Hall to begin. Unlike such larger denominations as the Mormon and Catholic churches, Metropolitan caters to gays and lesbians who wish to worship openly instead of pretending to be straight.

Excommunication stories from the larger religious ranks are common among Metropolitan’s congregation. Imagine you discover you’re gay, look to your Pentecostal pastor for help, and instead of turning the other cheek, he boots you right out of the church.

That’s precisely what happened to Tim Davis, 47, as a teenager growing up in Portland. He quit going to church altogether until discovering Metropolitan several years ago. He enjoys the small-church “Sunday morning coming down” atmosphere at Oddfellows Hall, and is a member of the choir. He drives up from San Francisco for services every weekend, staying in the Guerneville cabin he shares with husband Wayne Joiner, 55.

That’s not a misprint. Tim and Wayne were married by Metropolitan pastor Elisabeth Middelberg in San Francisco on Feb. 13. As she noted during her Sunday sermon, “Jesus has been known to tweak with people’s belief systems.”

Wayne knows all about that. He grew up in Georgia knowing he was gay early on and took the cure at age 19: he got married. He knew it was a mistake from the get-go, but stayed married for 26 years. Tim’s attempted cure at age 23 wasn’t as long-lived; his straight marriage crashed and burned after just nine short months.

For both men, having society’s official stamp of approval on their marriage, if only for the moment, is more a civil matter than a spiritual or religious issue. “I don’t feel like a second-class citizen anymore,” Tim says.

As members of San Francisco’s gay community, which has been ravaged by HIV and AIDS for the past 20 years, they’re quite familiar with the grim red tape longtime same-sex partners must negotiate just to ensure that personal property can be bequeathed to loved ones rather than being snatched from the grave by hostile surviving members of the deceased’s family. Tim and Wayne won’t have to go through that now.

Both are still relatively healthy. Wayne suffers from a debilitating form of arthritis but is HIV-negative, and Tim, who is HIV-positive, could easily live another 20 years if he keeps taking his medication. They’ve built a comfortable but modest life together. A small apartment in San Francisco, a home entertainment system they’re still making payments on, a car, a pet parrot. Now that they’re married, they’ve gained a little peace of mind.

“It’s not that we have much,” Tim says. “But I don’t want Wayne being emptied out by my family.”

Tim and Wayne refer to each other as husband and husband, but the phrase of choice emerging from San Francisco’s month of gay marriages is “spouses for life.” That’s how Petaluma residents Randy Hansen and Dean Westergard, who tied the knot in San Francisco on Feb. 14, now refer to each other.

“We’ve been together 35 years, so there hasn’t been a big difference,” Randy says in a telephone interview. “We’ve always loved each other.” Randy and Dean had been together longer than any of the hundreds of other same-sex couples waiting in line at San Francisco City Hall, so the lesbian couple who had staked out first place in line gave up their spot to them, making Randy and Dean the first couple to be married on Valentine’s Day. Relatives from their native southeastern Idaho later saw them on that evening’s NBC national newscast. They’ve come a long way since moving to California in 1975.

Like Tim and Wayne, Randy and Dean also wanted to set a precedent in case one of them should die. “Both of our families are loving,” Dean says. “But when money is on the table, things can get ugly.” Prior to getting married, they’d entered a domestic partnership and established a living trust. Officially sanctioned marriage is one more piece of legal evidence proving their lifelong commitment to one another.

Santa Rosans Donna Piepgras, 55, and Lucie James, 60, have been together 20 years and never thought same-sex marriage would be legal during their lifetimes. When Mayor Newsom first presented the chance, Donna balked, and the couple argued about it.

“To me it was a big deal, I really wanted to go!” Lucie says. “I wanted to be married, just like everybody else.”

Donna relented, and they were married on Feb. 15. “The whole experience was totally awesome,” Lucie gushes. “It was like a love-fest without the sex and the drugs,” Donna deadpans.

Both women are surprised to find that marriage has added a whole new dimension to their relationship.

“There is a feeling of commitment that is different for me,” Donna says.

“I didn’t realize how validated I would feel,” Lucie adds. “It doesn’t change the amount of love we feel for each other, but it’s all about love, and that really feels good to me.”

For the most part, co-workers, friends and family members have reacted positively to their marriage. Lucie’s sister, estranged for 15 years, recently made contact and will soon visit with her new husband. Donna’s parents are still trying to figure out what to make of it all, and have yet to return the e-mail announcing their daughter’s same-sex marriage.

Donna and Lucie don’t talk about who’s going to get their stuff when they die, but like their male counterparts, they seem to view marriage as a civil issue, not a moral or religious matter. When they say that same-sex marriage makes them feel validated, it’s civil society that’s stamping the ticket. Gaining any specific religion’s seal of approval is another matter entirely. Even when the discussion is confined to Judeo-Christian belief systems, widespread agreement on the issue of same-sex marriage is difficult to reach.

Roy Lamoreaux says that plenty of friends have told him privately that same-sex marriage is like saying “two plus two equals three.” But not one of them volunteered to go to the city council and say that in public. Roy found the implications of same-sex marriage so alarming he decided to take the burden upon himself.

Roy’s easy to talk to, with a worldview filtered through the twin prisms of Mormonism and perhaps a tad too much Fox News. Same-sex marriage threatens the moral fabric of the country from within, he says, even as it makes us look “weak and vulnerable” to our terrorist enemies abroad.

“The gay lifestyle is looked at around the world as evil and wrong by Muslims and other groups,” he explains. “They would feel justified in praying to Allah to have us all wiped off the map.”

Roy feels that the freedoms granted by the Constitution and the institution of marriage are inseparable, and that the evil in same-sex marriage corrodes the foundations of both. “The Founding Fathers had a reason to trust the people,” he says softly. “They were a moral people. I don’t think this is the right way to take our country.”

The idea that marriage is a sacred right granted only to a man and a woman is shared by most of the major Christian denominations, Catholicism and Mormonism included. The New Testament passage most often cited as supporting this view is Rom. 1: 26-28: “For this reason, God gave them up to degrading passions. Their women exchanged natural intercourse for unnatural, and in the same way also the men, giving up natural intercourse with women, were consumed with passion for one another. Men committed shameless acts with men and received in their own persons the due penalty for their error.”

But as the Rev. Middelberg points out in a research paper she wrote while studying at Church Divinity School of the Pacific, in order to understand the text’s meaning, it must be placed in the historical context of its author, Paul. When Paul writes that women and men exchanged “natural” intercourse for “unnatural intercourse,” Middelberg argues that he’s referring to the social hierarchy of his native Tarsus, A.D. 5-67.

Free men owned slaves and were placed over women and children in a “natural order” based on social status; free men were permitted to have sex with free women, free male youth and slaves of either sex. Teachers were permitted to have sex with students. Free adult males were forbidden to have sex with other free adult males; likewise for free adult females, who were also forbidden to have sex with slaves.

“When Paul talks about what is natural, he is talking about this particular construction of sexuality,” Middelberg writes. “Without adopting the same worldview in the 20th century, it is hard to use this text to condemn homosexuality as it is lived out in today’s society.”

So it goes with the Old Testament passages used most often to condemn homosexuality, Leviticus and the story of Sodom and Gomorrah cited by Roy at the Sebastopol City Council meeting. It’s all a matter of historical interpretation.

“As I said at the [city council] meeting,” Rabbi Michael Robinson recalls on the telephone, “I take the Bible seriously–too seriously to take it literally. Biblical literalism does not make sense. In Leviticus, it says ‘love thy neighbor.’ But it also says if you have a stubborn rebellious child, stone him.”

The story of Sodom and Gomorrah is told in Gen. 19: 4-11. Lot settles with his family in Sodom, a city reputed to be as inhospitable as neighboring Gomorrah. When two angels come down to investigate, Lot offers them his home for the night. The neighbors object. “Bring the visitors out unto us, that we may know them,” they pound on Lot’s door. He offers up his daughters, which fails to satiate the mob. The angels smite the crowd with blindness, and the next morning, after Lot escapes, God levels Sodom and Gomorrah with fire and brimstone.

“The cities were destroyed for not recognizing the obligations of hospitality, and the whole story is a moral allegory on the dire effects of inhospitality,” writes British scholar Rictor Norton in his book A History of Homophobia. Norton writes that most modern Biblical scholars, aside from the more evangelistic ones, accept this interpretation.

No doubt Roy Lamoreaux and many other Christians and Jews will refute such interpretations. But the interpretations are out there, and anyone searching for an open-and-shut case for or against same-sex marriage in the Bible will be disappointed. Attempting to apply a modern meaning to the texts of antiquity is fraught with potential misinterpretation. Perhaps that’s one reason the Founding Fathers saw the wisdom in separating church from state.

Not every progressive thinks that same-sex marriage is an inherently good thing. “Why rejoice when state and church extend their grip, which is what marriage is all about?” asks Alexander Cockburn in a recent essay in the online edition of Counterpunch. “Assimilation is not liberation, and the invocation of ‘equality’ as the great attainment of these gay marriages should be challenged.

“[I]ssues of hospitals visits or healthcare should have nothing to do with marriage, and marriage as a rite should have nothing to do with legal rights,” he continues. “Separate ‘marriage’ from legal recognition of a bond, of a kinship. . . . Get religion out of the law.”

Like Cockburn, Sebastopol civil attorney Peter Mancus supports legal unions for same-sex couples but is concerned that advocates of same-sex marriage may be mistaken in assuming lesbians and gays are covered by state and federal equal-protection laws.

“I think that current California law that says marriage must be limited to a heterosexual couple does not violate the equal-protection clause,” Mancus elaborates later by phone. In order to invoke the equal-protection clause, same-sex marriage advocates have to clear two hurdles: the strict-scrutiny test and the rational-basis test. The first hurdle is higher than the second. If same-sex opponents can show that there is the slightest rational basis for making a distinction that excludes homosexuals from marriage, then the strict-scrutiny test cannot be applied, and the case will fail.

“A lot of people will probably cringe when I articulate what I think some of the rational bases are,” he says. Suppose, he suggests, studies showed that the rate of HIV infection was much higher among homosexual males than the rest of the population. Since HIV can result in AIDS and AIDS has no known cure, an argument could be made that there is a rational basis for making a distinction between heterosexuals and homosexuals when it comes to the societal sanctioning of marriage. Mancus thinks a much stronger argument for same-sex marriage can be made using the Ninth Amendment.

“The Founding Fathers knew that it was impossible for them to think up all the rights in advance,” he says. “The Ninth Amendment was intended as a reservation of those rights.” Even, perhaps, a right for same-sex couples to marry.

For now, the same-sex marriages have come to a halt, but not soon enough for Roy Lamoreaux. As a recently divorced father, he’s experienced the deteriorating institution that is modern American marriage firsthand.

In fact, his ex-wife left him for a woman. “It’s not funny!” he protests good-naturedly.

Heidi Lamoreaux and her new partner, Panther, were among the first same-sex couples to wed in San Francisco.

Roy found out about the wedding from his seven-year-old daughter, with whom he and his ex-wife share joint custody. He was surprised at the news, but not shocked. Since coming out as a lesbian and divorcing him in 2000, Heidi has become an outspoken advocate for the cause. Roy’s still fond of her, and says that Panther is “a nice and nurturing person. I just don’t agree with them on the morality issue.”

Heidi was raised as a Mormon in Bonneville, Utah, and met Roy while on missionary duty. He was 33, she was 26, and both were relatively old to be single and childless in a religion that puts such a heavy emphasis on marriage and procreation. They had a baby and lasted six years before Heidi discovered who she really is. The church excommunicated her and she hasn’t spoken to her parents since, but she and Panther, now spouses for life, are happy. She still has a soft spot for her ex, too.

“I respect him for standing up for what he believes in,” Heidi says. “His dream family was destroyed by this whole issue.”

It’s something, to stand up before a priest or a justice of the peace and pledge to love another human being for the rest of your life. It used to be insurance that you wouldn’t be spending your old age alone.

Most marriages don’t last that long these days, as Roy Lamoreaux can testify. Don’t feel sorry for him, though. No matter what you think about his beliefs, Roy’s a nice guy, and while nice guys may finish last, they very rarely spend long periods of time alone. The right woman is waiting out there somewhere. Or who knows? Perhaps it’s the right man. Either way, it sure beats the heck out of being lonely.

From the March 31-April 6, 2004 issue of the North Bay Bohemian.

© Metro Publishing Inc.

‘Dancing at Lughnasa’

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‘Dancing at Lughnasa’

Painted by Memory: Craig Mason (from left), Elana Kepner and Michael Smith are among the players in ‘Lughnasa.’

Last Dance

PASCO conjure up dreamy ‘Lughnasa’

Memories do not return to us whole, but in pieces, with certain bits standing out clearly while others are missing entirely. Brian Friel’s 1992 Tony-award-winning drama Dancing at Lughnasa is, among other things, a play about memory, and its current staging by the Pacific Alliance Stage Company beautifully highlights this theme by conjuring a detailed vision of a small Irish farm in 1932–and then leaving out random scraps and fragments.

The house, for example, where Michael Mundy (Craig Mason), the now-grown narrator, was raised by his mother and four aunts is only partly there on the stage–a couple of walls, half a window, a roof that arches up above the cottage and then simply stops in midair. When Michael’s mother, the young, romantically inclined Christina (Elana Kepner) sets out to do some ironing, we see the old ironing board and the fabric, but the iron in her hand, sliding purposefully up and down the board, is not there. We see the aunts knitting and cooking, but the knitting needles and the stirring spoon are often gone from the picture.

In this way the bittersweet Lughnasa progresses, with the audience seeing only those parts that remain the strongest in the narrator’s somewhat fading memory. The most powerful reflection of this is that Michael does not see himself in these memories–and neither do we.

In those scenes involving his boyhood interactions with his family, the grown narrator stands in the yard of the house, while his mother or his aunts kneel or stoop beside an invisible boy. When they talk with him, it is the grown man standing at a distance who speaks the words of the young Michael. Such visual poetry infuses the entire production, sensitively directed by Hector Correa with a sense of heartbreaking frailty, a lovely construction of rich nostalgia built on a foundation of loss and sadness.

The story takes place on the eve of Lughnasa, a pagan festival honoring Lugh, the ancient Celtic god of light and music. The unmarried Mundy sisters–Maggie, Agnes, Christina, Kate and Rose–live in an Ireland that is shakily balanced between the pagan observances of its past and the strict Christianity of the present. The women have their own memories of having danced under the moon at Lughnasa celebrations when they were young. But the eldest sister, the emotionally straight-jacketed Kate (an astonishing, complex performance by Phoebe Moyer), no longer approves of such un-Christian behavior; the family has already been rocked with scandal once, as young Michael is the illegitimate product of a seven-year-old dalliance between Chris and a traveling Welsh charmer named Gerry (Michael Smith).

Now, their beloved missionary brother Jack (George Maguire) has returned home after 25 years in Africa, though it seems clear that he was the one converted, and not the other way around. With the village buzzing with rumors that Father Jack has “gone native,” the sister find their standing in the community once again at risk.

When Gerry suddenly reappears to woo Christina, Kate attempts in vain to keep him away, sensing that his involvement will lead to the family’s disintegration. She’s right, though in the end she’s as much a cause for her sisters’ fate as is Gerry or Jack or the prurient gossip of the community.

The cast is uniformly excellent, giving lived-in, three-dimensional performances that never stray into cliché. The most vivid performance is Moyer’s dead-on portrayal of Kate, and in many ways, it is Kate who stands at the center of the play. She is the one who best reflects the playwright’s examination of the bonds of culture and the yearning of the human spirit. Like Kate, life is alternately beautiful and powerful, and it is frequently unfair.

‘Dancing at Lughnasa’ plays Thursday-Sunday through April 11. Thursday, 7:30pm; Friday- Saturday, 8pm; Sunday, 2:30pm. Spreckels Performing Arts Center, 5409 Snyder Lane, Rohnert Park. $14-$19. 707.588.3400.

From the March 31-April 6, 2004 issue of the North Bay Bohemian.

© Metro Publishing Inc.

Oscar-Nominated Shorts

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Oscar-Nominated Shorts

Balls to the Wall: Lionel Bailiu’s film ‘Squash’ is part of the Academy Award Nominated Shorts program at the Rialto.

Salt and Bitter and Good

Something for everyone at Oscar shorts

By Gretchen Giles

The short films typically nominated at the Oscars couldn’t be more radically different from that three-piece monolith The Lord of the Rings that swept the awards these past years. Running less than 30 minutes each, these shorts aren’t usually seen in theaters, are always low-budget by Hollywood standards and sometimes act less like the narrative force fields of their longer brethren than as small, imagistic poems.

Once the ceremonies are over, the glitz swept away and Billy Crystal presumably installed in other work, the last juice of the spectacle is nicely squeezed by a compilation release of the short films nominated for consideration. For the fourth year, Rialto Cinemas Lakeside in Santa Rosa screens those films that are available (of the 10 nominated, only five are in release) on April 2-8.

The marvelously aimless Harvie Krumpet, which won the Best Animated Short Film category this year, is an Australian tickle of stop-frame claymation. Fans of Chicken Run and the Wallace and Gromit series will immediately recognize the elastic plasticity of this type of animation, modestly starring Harvie as a nowhere man born in a small Polish cabin in 1922 to an insane mother and a lumberjack father who has hands “like shovels.”

Narrated by actor Geoffrey Rush, the film traces Harvie as he escapes the Nazis only to arrive in Australia and live the ho-hum life of a city dump worker, underwear-lint inspector and cigarette smoker. Love amazingly comes into his life, as does a child. He discovers a fondness for nudity, he learns how to be free within his own rules, he gets old, he dies. Not exactly uplifting in sketch, Harvie Krumpet nonetheless is a slight, lovely slice in which many bad things happen, some good is celebrated and it all slips naturally enough away in the end.

Also animated is Canadian filmmaker Chris Hinton’s four-and-a-half minute sweetie Nibbles. A father takes his sons on a fishing trip. They eat on the way there and eat on the way back. A fish is caught. Period. But Hinton’s seriously good drawings and overamped soundtrack make this a thrill-ride of a day, encapsulated into less than five minutes.

The Best Live Action Shorts are more serious fare. Germany’s Red Jacket follows a Nike soccer coat from a bereaved German father’s waste bin to a Red Cross distribution center to the arms of an urchin in Sarajevo. Whether the jacket inflicts bad luck or causes good is to be seen, as the coat affects the wearer in surprising ways.

Slovenia’s entry, (A) Torzija, is also set in the terror of war-torn Sarajevo. There, a choir on its way to the safety and swank of a Parisian appearance, await passage through a tunnel as bombs explode around them. A farmer whose cow is having trouble giving birth enlists the group to sing the calf into existence.

Speaking of swank Parisian safety, France’s entry, Squash, is a psychological thriller set in the claustrophobic plane of a private squash club. As an employer and his underling pound the ball off the walls, they emotionally joust over job and affections. Tightly shot and powerful, this 27-minute sketch would make Mamet proud.

Running less than two hours total, the Academy Award Nominated Shorts program is a visual buffet of different treats, salt and bitter and good.

Academy Award Nominated Shorts program plays Friday to Thursday, April 2-8, at Rialto Cinemas Lakeside, 551 Summerfield Road, Santa Rosa. $5.50-$8.50. For showtimes, call 707.525.4840.

From the March 31-April 6, 2004 issue of the North Bay Bohemian.

© Metro Publishing Inc.

Figs

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Figs

Fruit of the Gods: The mighty fig actually flowers within its skin.

Real Food Revolution

The girl, the fig and the mushroom man

By Heather Irwin

The girl calls him the “mushroom man.” That, or the “god of dirt and fungus” (affectionately, of course).

She never quite knows when he’ll show up. The mysterious master of mushrooms just arrives unannounced at the back door of her kitchen with a treasure of moist, earthy delights, the booty of a day’s woody wanderings. Culling her mental recipe file, she–Sondra Bernstein, the girl of the Girl and the Fig–creates a wild mushroom risotto or wood ear gravy for the evening’s menu. And we, the diners, are all the luckier for their meeting.

Used to be there were lots of people like the mushroom man who peddled what they found, grew or caught that day. And then, with the advent of air shipping and pesticides and megafarms, there were hardly any people like the mushroom man left at all. But with the 20-year-long “aha!” farm moment sparked by Alice Waters and the slow-food movement, people like the mushroom man are starting to resurface.

But that isn’t what this story is about, because much has been said (maybe too much) about the trendy local foods phenomenon. Restaurant menus all but list a street address for your beets. Trés chic.

Instead, this is about asking whether there is really a difference between farmed mushrooms from Watsonville and those foraged by the miraculous mushroom man.

The answer is a resounding yes, according to Bernstein. In her Girl and the Fig Cookbook (Simon and Schuster; $30), due out in April, she highlights not just the local foods that make up nearly all of her 100-plus recipes, but calls out by name many of the irreplaceable, irrepressible local personalities purveying her favorite ingredients, quirks and all.

In discussing her wild mushroom risotto, she says that Stephen Scallopino (aka the mushroom man) arrived on the back porch of her original Glen Ellen restaurant some four years ago “like a traveling mushroom salesman” selling chanterelles and wood ears out of his car. Not too surprisingly, Bernstein shooed him away, a bit leery.

“Who would have thought that buying mushrooms out of someone’s car was the way to taste the real flavor of the forest,” she wonders. Certainly not me. Frankly, it sounds like the start of a bad rave.

But Bernstein writes that the difference between the farmed and foraged mushrooms is immense. The farmed mushrooms tend to have a more delicate flavor compared to the “rich, earthy and robust” flavors of the foraged mushrooms. In discussing Scallopino’s prowess in uncovering strange and unique local fungi, she talks reverently about a man she has come to know and trust over the years and who has influenced her cooking and her recipes–and yet, a man who nonetheless sells foraged mushrooms out of his car.

But what Bernstein outlines is perhaps the evolution of local food buying. What could be defined as microregional cooking is a newish/ oldish idea of incorporating highly artisan foods produced in very small quantities, often changing daily or weekly, sometimes even grown for a specific restaurant.

Although it sounds like a chef’s nightmare, one San Francisco restaurant has contracted a local farm to grow a particular breed of peppers usually only found in Spain. Wanting to differentiate themselves from other restaurants using the same local produce outlets, more and more restaurants are looking for completely unique flavors and radically different regional and artisan foods, all produced–and here’s the key–with personal relationships to the growers.

A growing number of chefs are exerting control, or at least oversight, over not just the final product, but the entire process. By forming a relationship with the producers, they tap into the expertise of artisan growers and learn the ins and outs of their product.

For example, in Napa Bernstein had formed a close personal relationship with the growers of some 225 fig trees–a tiny farm in comparison with the thousands of acres of trees in some central valley growers’ fields. The couple, Mr. and Mrs. Fig, as she calls them, loved their fruit, cultivating a number of different species for their unique qualities. Bernstein came to respect their advice and their produce greatly, learning about the growing process and the unique flavors and idiosyncrasies of each variety, and would take deliveries (or pick up the figs) on a weekly basis. She became a part of the process.

“But like all good things, the sad truth is that figs don’t exactly fly off the shelves at Wal-Mart, and Mr. and Mrs. Fig couldn’t keep the farm up alone. They sold the property, and the figs were removed and replaced with, you guessed it, grapevines. “I have not seen such beautiful figs since,” mourns Bernstein.

But the girl hasn’t held it against the grapes. In fact, since opening her first restaurant in Glen Ellen, she’s been a huge fan of Rhone wines, introducing a generation of Chardonnay drinkers to the subtleties of Viognier. The drinkability of Rhone wines (Syrah, Roussanne, Marsanne) are a good match to the simplicity of the Girl and the Fig’s simple country foods (prepared with French passion, according to Bernstein). For each dish, the cookbook gives a wine pairing, most of which are Rhone varietals.

Simple, homey and conversational, Bernstein’s new cookbook is like her restaurants. There is a sense of place, a comfort with the unique people of the region and the amazingly diverse produce that makes Northern California such a food lover’s paradise–even if that produce does sometimes arrive in the back of the mushroom man’s car. The girl wouldn’t have it any other way.


Get Your Fig On

Although Bernstein’s cookbook comes out in mid-April, don’t start looking for local fresh figs until June or July. Local produce purveyors say, however, that figs from further south may start arriving as soon as May. In the meantime, dried figs from Turkey are about all you’ll find. They impart a sweeter, more jammy quality even when rehydrated. But when you need a fig, you need a fig.

The Girl and the Fig Cafe and Wine Bar, 13690 Arnold Drive, Glen Ellen. 707.938.2130.
The Girl and the Fig, 222 Weller St., Petaluma. 707.769.0123.
The Girl and the Fig, 110 West Spain St., Sonoma. 707.938.3634.

From the March 31-April 6, 2004 issue of the North Bay Bohemian.

© Metro Publishing Inc.

Swirl ‘n’ Spit

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Swirl ‘n’ Spit

Swirl ‘n’ Spit
Tasting Room of the Week

Niebaum-Coppola Winery

By Heather Irwin

Lowdown: The urge to call Niebaum-Coppola Estate Vineyards and Winery and ask if they have Sofia in a can is almost killing me. Because the answer is yes, they do. And plenty of club kids are happy to let her out, poor dear.

No need for translation. “Sofia” is the namesake Blanc de Blancs (that’s a sparkling white wine to you and me) created for daughter and director Sofia Coppola as a coming-of-age gift from daddy. All dolled up in a shiny pink can, the blushing spritzers are making waves on the lounge circuit, accessorized with a tiny telescoping straw and fitting conveniently in even the tiniest of Prada satchels.

Vibe: Haven’t you guessed it? Niebaum-Coppola is all about star power. Starting in the mid-1800s, the winery was run by Gustave Niebaum, a brash bully of a man who vowed to make California wines great, at any financial cost. He succeeded, making legendary wines throughout the late 19th and early 20th centuries. And the legacy has continued. Director Francis Ford Coppola (The Godfather, Apocalypse Now) purchased the winery 25 years ago and sunk millions into producing his own namesake wines while showcasing his family’s movie memorabilia in a grand palatial estate only Hollywood could have dreamed up.

Watch the Washingtons: Not all of us can afford the glamorous life. Many Napa wineries charge a premium for tasting, including Niebaum-Coppola, commanding $8.50 for standard tasting and $20 for reserve tasting. Ouch. We committed the $8.50, which includes a swanky logo glass and four hearty 1 oz. pours. To get a sneak sip of the new 2002 Skywalker Ranch Viandante del Cielo Marin County Chardonnay ($30)–featuring George Lucas’ own grapes–we skipped the pricey reserve tasting and asked for a pour in the wines-by-the-glass room ($5). You can also taste Sofia’s Blanc de Blancs, but we coughed up the $5 for a can of our own and popped it open later that evening. You can also score a free coffee or espresso when you buy a copy of Coppola’s respected storytelling zine Zoetrope.

Mouth value: Unlike other superstar wineries, the wine is actually pretty darn good, garnering plenty of accolades. The 2002 Director’s Reserve Chardonnay ($22) is smooth yet sassy–you can definitely taste the vanilla and toast flavors. The 2001 Director’s Reserve Merlot ($34) and Cabernet Sauvignon ($34) are lusty little plucks, with the Merlot being our standout favorite. The winery’s flagship wine, Rubicon, is released in mid-March and is highly prized.

Don’t miss: Head up the million dollar staircase to see Coppola’s Hollywood memorabilia.

Five-second snob: We got the skinny on French vs. American oak barrels, both used by the winery. The two oaks are different species and thicknesses, and are constructed differently. French oak typically lets the wine breathe more and is described as more elegant in flavor, running upward of $600 a barrel. American oak barrels command only about half the price and are sometimes used for spicier wines like Shiraz and Zinfandel. Barrels last from three to five years before being replaced, and the newness of a barrel can make a big difference in the flavor of the wine (newer barrels imparting stronger flavors).

Spot: Niebaum-Coppola Estate Vineyards and Winery, 1991 St. Helena Hwy., Rutherford. Open daily, 10am-5pm. 707.968.1100.

From the March 24-31, 2004 issue of the North Bay Bohemian.

© Metro Publishing Inc.

Banyan

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Banyan

Art of Going For It: Stephen Perkins forms a sound trust with Banyan.

Cliff Hanger

Banyan push themselves to music’s edge

By Greg Cahill

Banyan is the type of band that doesn’t rehearse, so we can be inspired onstage,” says Stephen Perkins. “Why get together the night before and blow your wad, right? Let’s just fuckin’ do it onstage!”

For Perkins, the drummer for Jane’s Addiction and Porno for Pyros, playing in the moment is one of the things that led him to form Banyan, a side project that employs a rotating lineup of stellar musicians and enlisted 20 players (including Red Hot Chili Peppers’ bassist Flea) on the band’s last album.

“There are no boundaries when you have instrumental music,” says Perkins, chatting on the phone from his L.A. home while the scorching prog-rock of Rush’s Caress of Steel simmers in the background. “There’s a lot of freedom to it.”

Banyan, performing Thursday, March 26, in Fairfax, promise a few surprises on their return trip to the North Bay. The lineup for the show includes Perkins, Marin County jazz bassist Rob Wasserman, trumpet player Willie Waldman, and guitarist and fiddler Clint Wagner. Wasserman will be replacing ex-Minuteman bassist Mike Watts, a Banyan regular who is on tour with Iggy Pop and the Stooges. Nels Cline, the band’s steady guitarist, is unavailable that night (he recently got tapped to join Wilco). Painter Norton Wisdom, who creates an impressionistic portrait of each night’s music live from the stage, will also be absent.

“For the musician and listener alike, a rotating lineup is great because it is so challenging and exciting to hear what’s going to happen,” Perkins says. “We all feed off of each other. It’s what I call an environmental band; if we’re in a small, smoky room at 2am, we’re going to sound a certain way, and that will be different than if we’re playing outdoors at noon on a college campus. We make it up onstage as we go along.”

Perkins has embraced that esoteric approach since his teens, when he began experimenting with a distinctive drum sound. “I figured out that I could play on a tribal level, working with polyrhythms rather than showing off,” he says. “It’s simple, yet it can still put you on the edge of a cliff musically and then push you over rhythmically. I look at it as a tribal, primitive pulse–if I were an eight-year-old, I’d say it’s like George of the Jungle.”

One of his early band mates was guitarist Dave Navarro, who also later joined Jane’s Addiction. “Even today there’s no one I can play better with than Dave,” says Perkins. “We’ve been playing together since we were 15. We hit it off and played as much as we could after school and on weekends. We really understood that you can really eat each other’s brain, find out what the other one is thinking and rely on each other with confidence. It’s that feeling that I’m going to go for it past the normal spot. A lot of folks might scratch their head and ask, ‘Where’s he going?’ But Dave and I know we’ll end up back at the right spot. We formed a sound because of our trust.”

That kind of trust is a key element in Banyan’s performances as well. “Most of the jam bands today sound very bluegrass, but we’re into a punk-rock sort of thing,” Perkins says. “The attitude is punk in that there are aggressive drum beats, very tribal, but the attitude also is jazz, because everybody gets to take a solo, everybody gets to say something and have a voice in the music.

“It’s a fun game but it’s also a dangerous game,” he says of the band’s experimentalism, “because your reputation is at stake at all times. That’s why you have to surround yourself with great players. If you’re going to go onstage and make it up, you don’t want to be up there with someone who doesn’t understand where you’re going or lacks the confidence to move with you.

“With players like Nels Cline, there’s no concern–you can just go with it, because even if a song falls apart on you, at that moment you can turn it toward another direction and make it art–the art of just going for it.”

Banyan perform Friday, March 26, at 19 Broadway. 19 Broadway Ave., Fairfax. 9:30pm. $15-$18. 415.459.1091.

From the March 24-31, 2004 issue of the North Bay Bohemian.

© Metro Publishing Inc.

UFW

State of the UnionUnited Farm Workers turn up heat on North Bay companiesBy R. V. ScheideAs members of the United Farm Workers union prepare for a week of celebrations centered on Cesar Chavez Day, this Wednesday, March 31, the union continues to make strides both locally and nationally in the ongoing battle to better the wages and working conditions...
Read more

Cinema Epicuria

Wise Beyond Her Years: Jena Malone costars in 'Saved!'Beautiful TruthsCinema Epicuria gets personal For most fans of the cinematic arts, the recipe for a memorable film festival is simple: we want a laid-back environment, a focus on excellent films we might not get to see anywhere else, and maybe a certified filmmaking celebrity or two. Not too many, though--just...
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Swirl ‘n’ Spit

Swirl 'n' SpitTasting Room of the WeekRavenswood WineryBy Heather IrwinLowdown: You've got to be making some damn good wine to inspire folks--normally sane, rational folks--to get your winery's logo tattooed on their bodies. But this is no normal, sane wine; it is the mighty red Zinfandel. And unlike the cute, pink stuff you serve with fried chicken on a...
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Ronald K. Brown

Come Ye: Ronald K. Brown, foreground, is changing American dance.Prayer WarriorChoreographer Ronald K. Brown comes into the lightBy Gretchen GilesOther people are making pretty dances," says choreographer Ronald K. Brown during an early morning phone call from a Washington, D.C., hotel room. "Besides," he laughs, "I think that mine are pretty."Pretty? Maybe. Beautiful, dense, emotional, spiritual, poetic, layered in...
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Same-Sex Marriage

Photograph by Rory McNamaraSpouses For Life: Donna Piepgras and Lucie James are among the 4,100 couples who wed in San Francisco.Lovers in a Dangerous TimeSame-sex marriage, religion and the great escape from lonelinessBy R. V. ScheideBeing lonely sucks. Maybe Greta Garbo vanted to be alone, but for the rest of us, we pair off, hanging on to our partners...
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‘Dancing at Lughnasa’

Painted by Memory: Craig Mason (from left), Elana Kepner and Michael Smith are among the players in 'Lughnasa.'Last DancePASCO conjure up dreamy 'Lughnasa' Memories do not return to us whole, but in pieces, with certain bits standing out clearly while others are missing entirely. Brian Friel's 1992 Tony-award-winning drama Dancing at Lughnasa is, among other things, a play about...
Read more

Oscar-Nominated Shorts

Balls to the Wall: Lionel Bailiu's film 'Squash' is part of the Academy Award Nominated Shorts program at the Rialto.Salt and Bitter and GoodSomething for everyone at Oscar shortsBy Gretchen GilesThe short films typically nominated at the Oscars couldn't be more radically different from that three-piece monolith The Lord of the Rings that swept the awards these past years....
Read more

Figs

Fruit of the Gods: The mighty fig actually flowers within its skin.Real Food RevolutionThe girl, the fig and the mushroom manBy Heather IrwinThe girl calls him the "mushroom man." That, or the "god of dirt and fungus" (affectionately, of course).She never quite knows when he'll show up. The mysterious master of mushrooms just arrives unannounced at the back door...
Read more

Swirl ‘n’ Spit

Swirl 'n' SpitTasting Room of the WeekNiebaum-Coppola WineryBy Heather IrwinLowdown: The urge to call Niebaum-Coppola Estate Vineyards and Winery and ask if they have Sofia in a can is almost killing me. Because the answer is yes, they do. And plenty of club kids are happy to let her out, poor dear.No need for translation. "Sofia" is the namesake...
Read more

Banyan

Art of Going For It: Stephen Perkins forms a sound trust with Banyan.Cliff HangerBanyan push themselves to music's edgeBy Greg CahillBanyan is the type of band that doesn't rehearse, so we can be inspired onstage," says Stephen Perkins. "Why get together the night before and blow your wad, right? Let's just fuckin' do it onstage!"For Perkins, the drummer for...
Read more
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